Change Engineer,
Psychology Teacher!
Jan: Started working with the Consortium for Learning Board on Phase 2 of their Business
Plan.
Jan: Asked to do Personal Therapy with 'Jasmine', a heroin 'addict' wanting to quit
the drug.
Commentary: I wouldn't pretend for a second that I can *cure* heroin addiction
but the therapy did make a real difference. [Jasmine's case study can be viewed in
the Services pages.]
Feb-Mar: Facilitated the Alcrest Academy in developing a new
Business Plan.
Commentary: Alcrest boss Allan Wakefield was a director of the Consortium
for Learning, had been impressed with my work for them and so asked me to help him
put together his new plan. As the plan had to meet certain Learning & Skills Council
Humberside funding criteria, it was essential that it met their objectives as well
as Allan's
Cobus strategy session, January 2003 - with Susan Rose, Lloyd Thomas and Steven Beevers.
[Steven Beevers/timer]
Shaving my legs(!) for Comic Relief, Red Nose Day, April 2003 - watched by Vermuyden
School Year 8 students who collected for the stunt. [Austin Straker]
May-June: Fourth Open Programme of 'An Introduction to Spiral Dynamics & Related
Models of Neuro-Linguistic Programming' at Centre 88 in Hull. This time the programme
was over 3 days, reinstating some material left out of the previous year's 2-day
programme and allowing more time for reflective learning.
July: Formally incorporated the East Yorkshire NLP Group into the Humberside MESH
Network at its second anniversary Meeting at Centre 88 in Hull.
As a result of the presentation, two people from North-East Lincs Education-Business
Links got involved with the Humberside MESH Network while another came onto the next
open programme.
Mar: Facilitated an interactive presentation, 'Leadership: the Spiral Dynamics Perspective',
at the Grimsby Europarc Innovation Circle.
April: At her instigation, was interviewed about Humber MeshWORKS (via phone) by
Alex Hall on her late show on Radio Humberside.
Commentary: Iwanted to bring more NLP into the MESH Network and the NLP Group was
struggling for numbers, so the incorporation made sense. It also provided me with
Wendy Baxter of Summit Consulting and Steve Gorton of Enabling Development Ltd with
whom to share responsibility for facilitating the Network.
September: Now living in Hessle, took on a 'permanent' part-time position at Vermuyden
School in Goole - where I had been doing some supply - to teach primarily A-level
Pyschology to 'Boothferry Sixth Form', the combined Sixth Form of Vermuyden and nearby
Howden School & Technology College - where I had done some supply the year before.
(To complete my timetable, I also took Key Stage 3 classes in Geography and History.)
Commentary:
Psychology teachers were in short supply and headteacher Anne McErlane knew of my
interest in Psychology; so....
For years I had thought off and on of returning to university to do a degree in Psychology,
wanting to develop my underpinning knowledge to Spiral Dynamics and NLP. Now I was
offered the chance to explore a wide area of Pyschology so I could teach it. Of course,
learning the syllabus in sufficient depth fast enough to keep the students on track
for their exams presented its own rather large challenge....! It led me to revisit
material I hadn't looked at seriously in 30 years - eg: Freud, the Behaviourists
- as well as take on board new ideas, especially the Cognitive and Evolutionary schools
of thought and investigation.
The ‘Introduction...’ Participants, June 2003 - (l-r): Gina Holdsworth (Hull), Melanie
Hunter (The Zone, Hull), (helping out) Helen Ezard (Compass, York), Deb Tate (Hull
CityVision), Tony Cosgrove (Nortech Services Ltd), Pauline Taylor (Humber EBLO) and
Angela Lambert-Dowell (Howden). Not pictured are John Till (Hull CityVision) and
Sally Jackson (Compass).
Oct: Commenced a second project with the Alcrest Academy, helping them to enhance
their quality systems.
Nov: Met with Jon Neal, Liberal Democrat councillor for Howden, to introduce him
to Spiral Dynamics and Neurological Levels.
Commentary: Jon had e-mailed me to know
more after reading 'Does Hull have a Race Relations Problem?' (originally posted
on Humber MeshWORKS in the August and now archived in the Blog. The meeting was fairly
brief but Jon, the prospective Liberal Democrat candidate for Howden in the next
general election, did talk about the possibilities of me introducing the models to
Liberal Democrat MPs and party officials when they came to campaign for him.
Dec: Led an INSET (staff training) session at Vermuyden on using sensory system (Visual,
Auditory, Kinaesthetic) strategies to make learning more accessible for students.
